south africa

This is a short story about my train journey from Johannesburg to Cape Town. As you can guess by the title, it will be similar to the movie 127 Hours except without the hiking, dismemberment, or anything else that is in that movie because I have never seen it.

Joburg to Cape Town should take 26 hours by train.

It should be a scenic journey with like-minded travelers sharing alcoholic beverages and taking pictures for Instagram.

IT’S LITERALLY NOT ANY OF THAT.

First, as any self-respecting traveler should, I read the reviews for this journey. They said things like, “be prepared for delays” and “bring snacks”. Naturally I figured those reviews were from privileged travel newbies that were constantly hungry and thought 30 minutes was a delay.

I have never been more wrong.

I’ll be completely honest here – most of the journey was smooth sailing until Kimberly (for all those named Kim who are reading this [Wan, Tsang, Kardashian, etc.] I apologize). Kimberly is the city from which my roommate hailed.

My roommate came in at 11:00pm, barely fit through the door, and spoke 3-4 English phrases so we didn’t talk much. And this I swear to you: at 11:15pm this unnamed human began to snore as if uninhibited air circulation throughout his lungs and esophagus was a complete impossibility. I tried pillows, ear plugs, headphones over earplugs, making loud noises to wake him, etc. but all failed. The solution: walk 25ft to the next train car and sleep in an unused room. True story.

Remember when I said the journey should take 26 hours? I added four hours to that because I expected a bit of a delay, so my expectation was a 30 hour adventure to a new and beautiful city. Long story short: 100km (~62 miles) from Cape Town the train in front of mine derailed, which added a cool ten hours to the journey. I don’t know if people were injured or the cause of the accident because very few people spoke English and I speak zero Afrikaans or Zulu. I never saw the train.

I’m almost certain that this person was either senile or had some sort of dementia, because he left all of my actual bags and took my laptop while the train had stopped (not at a station). I had just gone to dinner and the kitchen was closed so I headed back. No idea what would’ve happened if I had been able to sit down and eat.

After yelling at the guy for around five minutes, I just decided to pack up my things and move to a different room. At this point in the trip nobody cared where anyone stayed, we were about three hours away and no other passengers were going to board the sleeper train. I never got the guy’s name and I doubt anything I said registered – all he did was say sorry, then kept packing.

There’s not really anyone to tell and if I filed a complaint about the delay I would be laughed at hysterically and publicly shamed.

BUT, now I am in Cape Town, South Africa and it’s past midnight so I’ll get to bed. Feel free to ask questions – I’ll respond when I wake!

I plan to interview at least one person from each country I visit. Started with South Africa but I’ll retrace and interview a Brazilian soon.

Context/backstory for this person: I stayed in a four-person dorm at a hostel in Durban and there were two brothers in my room. I spoke with both separately about different things and decided to interview one because he had a lot to say.

One, “Jeremy” is a former professional footballer (soccer) and played for a few Premier League academies before his body gave out and he was unable to train anymore, he’s 20. The other is the person I interviewed:

(Questions in bold are me. “Eish” is an expression of exasperation or disbelief – it’s slang and this person uses it a lot, pronounced “eesh”)

Okay, so I’ll just ask a few questions and you can answer however you like, cool?

Cool

Awesome, what’s your name?

My friends call me The Beast

(smiling) The Beast?

Yeah, but you can call me B

Word, where are you from?

From Zimbabwe originally, but have been living in Johannesburg for around fifteen years.

Cool, cool. What brings you to Durban and how long have you been here?

Ah, I run a non-profit with my brothers and we’re here doing that. Been here for five days.

What is it that you guys do?

*points at skateboards* We teach kids how to skateboard so they have something to do after school. Eish, you know.. in Zimbabwe the only thing kids know is soccer, only soccer. Skateboarding is an Olympic sport now.

So you want to introduce skating to kids with the goal of getting them to the Olympics?

That’s the goal man, yeah. And I want to go to the US to learn how to make [skateboards] myself. I would be the first person to make skateboards here.

Awesome, so Durban then… what’s next? Just travel around the country?

Well we are at home in Joburg right now. My brother and I are just here to get away for a bit, really. We recently lost a brother.

Oh, man – I’m sorry to hear that.

Eish, yeah you know we needed some time away.

At this point B’s brother comes in and they talk a bit (“Jeremy” calls his brother “Beasto” in casual conversation, so I know that’s legitimately what people call him). B says he’s going to get some weed and that he’d be back soon, the next part is where things get.. intense.

Yo, brother – I will just smoke outside, you want to finish your questions?

Yeah that’s chill.

Man, I got this weed from a really crazy drunk lady. She was stumbling around and just yelling.

(laughing) Really?

Eish, and on my way back there was this van full of guys that just stopped in front of me. They expected me to walk away from them but I just stayed on my path. They talked about how I walk and pushed me up against the wall.

Wait, you mean you got mugged? Like, just now?

Eish man, it’s crazy I just pushed away and ran. They must have been learning or they just soft out here because that wouldn’t happen in Joburg. But I was scared shitless.

You mean they wouldn’t have let you go?

They would not let the person go, no. Eish, they would not rob me though.

In Johannesburg?

Yeah, I know all those people. Some of them are my brothers and.. I know they went the wrong path.. they steal and take and rob.

Eish, man. That’s why my brother was killed.

Killed?

Yeah three days ago. My brothers we saw a guy doing drugs.. man I hate drugs..

This guy was doing drugs and my brother said, “you shouldn’t do that here, there are kids”.

That guy got up and stabbed him in the neck.

Jesus.

Eish, there were kids that saw. That’s why I am here, I needed to get away.

I mean, I identify as a regular ol’ mixed dude but South Africa has got some seriously complex racial classifications.

Brief reason why: Apartheid. Citizens were classified because white people wanted to maintain power as the minority through segregation/institutional racism. Four groups were formed: black, white, coloured, and Asian.

Black: of African origin

White: Caucasian with white skin

Asian: of Asian origin minus Russia because Russia is literally never considered Asian for some reason

I was having a conversation with one of the people in my hostel room – talking about race and whatnot in South Africa. The guy keeps saying “we blacks…” when starting sentences, so I eventually say “yeah, we blacks..” and I get cut off. This man goes into detail with facts and charts explaining that I am actually not black, but coloured (at least in South Africa).

At this point I’m mildly offended – how is this random person going to tell me what I am?

So here’s the deal: I’m super racially ambiguous. I’ve been –

Hawaiian

Middle Eastern (general)

South African

Brazilian

Corbin Bleu

Malaysian

Mexican

Again, I’m just a mixed guy. My mother is white, my father is black. On applications for things I check both Caucasian and African-American or “two or more races”. In South Africa I am not white (obv.) or black (white mom) or Asian (…) so I’m coloured! Here it’s a ‘neutral’ term used to describe a culture and a race, so it’s fine with me for the ~20 days I’m in SA.

However:you have to understand that apartheid just ended. Like.. in our lifetimes. People that are 35+ here were old enough to comprehend what was happening and a lot of them still have the same mindset/prejudices. Rural towns still show signs of petty apartheid (segregation of things like bars and swimming pools) without the actual signs that say “non-whites only”.

Now I look at older white folks and wonder who they voted for, which is pretty much exactly what I do in the United States at present.

Let’s just talk about expectation vs. realities in the city of Johannesburg really quick. For example:

Expectation: Definitely going to have to buy water bottles. Just picture “African water”. Ew.

Reality: This city (and the rest of South Africa) has some of the cleanest tap water in the world. I’ve been drinking water from the tap for three days and I haven’t even died once.

Expectation: South Africa, as the most Western of African nations, will be fairly expensive across the board.

Reality: The meal pictured below was $12 and included my hot chocolate, not pictured (this was breakfast). I just bought a flight from Johannesburg to a soon-to-be-revealed city in Zimbabwe for $135. A large beer is $5. Most things are quite inexpensive.

E: Africa, warm.

R: lol NOPE. Southern Hemisphere means June is wintertime. The high today is 51°F/11°C , low is 39°F/4°C.

E: People are nice and will be excited to see an American.

R: again, nooooope. I try to stay away from generalizations but each interaction I’ve had with a service employee (someone I am paying to help me – i.e. Uber driver, waitress, etc.) has been… unimpressive. I’ll attribute this to culture and it’s something I’ll have to get used to, but people don’t say ‘you’re welcome” and tend to give blank stares when you ask for something. As if it’s a burden. Also I’m quite certain that Americans are more excited to hear that I live in California than South Africans are – that’s not a complaint, just an observation.

Johannesburg, or Jo’burg/Jozi, has been a really interesting experience so far. I definitely have not had such a pronounced love/hate relationship with any city I’ve visited in my life. Love the food, affordability, history, etc. Hate the cold, customer service, and still-present institutional racism.

What’s your least favorite city? Answer in the comments below and I’ll tell you my top (bottom?) two worldwide!

(I’m off on an adventure to two countries that are inside South Africa starting this morning after I visit the Cradle of Humankind.)

[5:55pm] Realized that the whole incident was both completely ridiculous and 100% my fault.

Brazil is a country that is currently experiencing a yellow fever outbreak, so my next country (South Africa) requires a vaccine for the virus. My slightly educated assumption (don’t assume while traveling) was that I would be able to get the vaccine on arrival in Johannesburg. Assumption false, SA stopped doing the vaccine-on-arrival.

[6:00pm] Weighed my options and panicked for a solid thirty minutes. My first step was calling the booking agency I bought all my tickets from, that way I could either cancel or change the flight that was leaving super soon. A cancel or change grants you at least a partial refund. Missing the flight means you lose it all.

[6:30pm] Using painfully slow airport Wi-Fi to call a US-based company via Skype did not make life easier. Honestly though, I was just really happy there was sixty minutes of free internet available.

[7:00pm] After 8 dropped calls, my travel agent and I decided it would be most cost effective (and the least hassle) for me to do as the gate agent ordered. She told me to get a yellow fever shot in Brazil and wait ten days for the vaccine’s incubation period. The reason I explored other options: the gate agent also suggested that I fly back to the US, get the shot, then fly to Johannesburg… (!!???)

Other, more reasonable, options:

bus/fly to Uruguay, which does not have a yellow fever outbreak, then fly to South Africa.

get a different flight to an African country that does not require the vaccine

buy a yellow fever vaccination form on the black market (this is ridiculous in more ways than you may think – I’ll explain below*)

go home

die

[7:26pm] Internet is almost no longer free which means I would no longer have internet. Called an Uber and headed back to the city so that I could binge drink and eat all the fried foods at the place I was staying.

*The yellow fever shot in Brazil is completely free and takes about twenty minutes from entering to exiting the hospital. It would be crazy to use a fraudulent document on an international flight, but even more crazy to use a fraudulent document that you could get legitimately for free.

Quick side note: I was going to use an analogy for the above statement but I actually cannot think of anything in the US that’s 100% free. Can you? (maybe.. voting?)

What now? I leave for Jo’burg on June 5th. I took a bus to Rio from SP ($30 USD, 6 hours) and will be here for a little bit so I can show you all the super touristy goodies that this city has to offer.